What The Shoe Really Means In 'Nope'!

Everyone is Confused on What the Shoe Really Means in Nope, and We FINALLY Figured it out! This is a video breakdown of the deeper meaning behind the shoe in Jordan Peels Nope and how the shoe actually teaches the viewer how to watch this movie with parallels from Gordy from Jupe's show Gordy's Home and the UFO only know as The Viewer or Jean Jacket. This is a short one, so we get straight to the point! Thanks for watching, and let us know if you think this is correct or not! Also, thanks to Dallas who helped me put these ideas together! #Nope #NopeExplained #JordanPeele #NopeMovie #NopeGordy #GordysHome #NopeShoeExplained #NopeBreakdown

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[potaterjim]

It's also further cemented by the fact that he kept the shoe: hell, he kept an entire shrine dedicated to it. Ordinarily, a memory like that would traumatize someone, but Jupe jumped at every chance to tell Amber all about it. He kept the shoe because he believed it had almost divine significance, that it was a sign that he was special and held some kind of bond over Gordy. When he encountered the UFO, he held onto a belief that he could tame it like he tamed Gordy, never understanding that he _never_ tamed gordy, he simply got lucky, like a shoe managing to fall and balance perfectly on end.

[bedelian]

I also just found the shoe incredibly unsettling. It's the idea of something 1 in a million happening randomly in the middle of such a horrifying event. Something that would normally cause you to get excited, but in this case it just confuses you. It's the chaos of it all.

[herewaskendra]

I don’t understand why people didn’t understand the significance of Gordy. Everything said in the film was about respecting animals rather than trying to control them. The whole movie centered around this.

[Smalls-eye]

If you listen carefully at the part where Gordy gets shot, you can hear that there was a balloon pop at the exact same time. If Gordy hadn’t gotten shot first he would have torn jupe to shreds as well

[pirobotbeta]

There is a story of a recovery crew searching an airplane crash site for survivors.
One of the team finds a stuffed animal in the arms of a dead child; the stuffed toy is perfectly intact, the child horribly mangled.
The sight of this toy in pristine condition drives the rescuer a bit mad; he throws the toy into a fire.
All that death and carnage, yet in the center of it the 'bad miracle' of an undamaged toy.

[WillCole]

Also the table cloth forms a veil between Gordys and Jupes eyes which later is represented by the cloud Jean jacket hides behind and also the co star girl who’s is mangled has a veil over her face that gets lifted when Jean jacket flies in and finally we see jupes hat fly off representing the veil being fully lifted and Jupe realizes the truth and we see his face is pure terror like when gordys massacre was happening only this time with Jean jacket, jupe was fully watching the entire spectacle unable to look away

[ShoggothLord]

Another important theme with Jupe is the problem of doing the opposite of the film crew OJ and Em tried working with at the start of the movie. They treated the horse like it was less than an animal—like an object—and didn't respect its boundaries.

But Jupe? Jupe *anthropomorphizes* the animals. Because Gordy calmed down and fell back on a trained behavior, Jupe ascribed human motives to the chimp—it spared him and tried to fistbump him, so it must have viewed him as its "friend." He anthropomorphizes Jean Jacket by assuming it must be a ship with people flying it—alien people, but still *people.* He doesn't approach it like a wild animal, so he doesn't try to understand its boundaries and respect them, and everyone payed the price because of it.

[kalieemjernigan]

I hate how people say the movie isn’t good because they don’t understand it. Jordan peele is a director who makes you use your mind. He doesn’t just hand you what you want to see. that’s what makes him brilliant.

[enwarner]

SPOILER: Also I think the trailer was designed in a way to throw you off the reveal of the movie. In the trailer you see the the disfigured woman from Gordy and the kids dressed up as aliens and you're lead to believe those are the alien or are connected to the aliens. It's a diversion to keep you from suspecting that the ship itself is the Alien. After seeing the woman in the audience it all clicked for me.

[joeylittle]

I think the opening scene where they put us in the perspective Of OJ at the commercial set kinda helped us feel that same uneasy, pressured vibe that maybe Gordy was feeling during the tv shows. The people on the show didn’t understand gordys boundaries thus creating the outburst. Secondly, I think the connection of Gordy, and the ufo tie in because OJ was the only one who respected boundaries of all the animals and all the people throughout the film. For example, He avoided talking about jupiters show because he knew it affected jup. He also respected the horses space. He never chased after them nor forced them to stay behind the fences. Although OJ and Jupiter survived traumatic experiences with danger, The difference between OJ and Jupiter however is OJ had true power over his danger (ufo) while Jupiter didn’t. His was false. Thus explaining why one ended up dead and the other alive. The connection between the two events was to contrast and show that sometimes in life, we aren’t really in control as much as we think we are.

[emperorcupcake]

This makes a lot of sense! I liked the movie but I've been puzzling over the connection between the Gordy scenes and the UFO. I think it makes sense that the connection is more through theme than the literal story

[karasluthqr]

i thought the stillness of the shoe signified how he survived. he stayed still (like the shoe) unlike his cast members who made a lot of noise and moved around. also tying into the “don’t look up” theme that saved them from the alien animal

[ssippilandelta]

I watched it 3 times it’s many layers it’s an amazing movie Peele is a genius. Gordy and Gene Jacket both died by the gun literally and figuratively. And a Praying Mantis is symbolic of many things but when one is on a house it means Angels watching over that house and during the scene with the Praying Manis, Angel was literally watching over their house from his work place

[amybrowning]

I don't think the shoe was a miracle because it made Jupe divert his eyes from Gordy. Jupe could have been looking at Gordy that whole time and it wouldn't have mattered because he hadn't noticed him under the table yet. When he does notice him, Jupe is looking in Gordy's eyes, but the tablecloth is hiding it enough where he doesn't feel he is being challenged. I think it's just an unsettling lucky thing during a horrifying event, an interesting extra tidbit to that crazy story that adds to the absurdness of it all and therefore getting a spot in his mini-museum. 

Also telling of how Jupe read into the whole situation, and thinking things had meaning when it was all just happenstance (like how he thought he was spared because of Gordy's liking of him but it wasn't about that at all).

And to add, like I saw mentioned here, I like the idea that it's a nod to "waiting for the shoe to drop"

[djmaus]

For me, the shoe indicated that we were looking at a memory, not history. Jupe kept the shoe and encased it standing up, therefore the recalled memory had it standing up. Just a theory

[thestarseeker]

The voyeur aspect is also certainly part of the spectacle theme. Jupe is hiding beneath the table and the ultra violence he sees is a spectacle he’s peeping on, but then the random still perfection of shoe is probably like an extra little morsel which cements his fascination with watching in general. He starts a live routine where other people can also watch something harrowing and amazing. He felt that his voyeurism gave him ownership, in a way, that’s one reason he created the shrine. He’s the survivor, he saw it all, things nobody else will ever see.

He’s special. People will feel special if they can get the “Oprah shot” and he got one of the ultimate Oprah shots by surviving Gordy’s rampage. But there are often costs for getting the shot, and the methods one uses to do so can also be questionable.

[Star-Mac]

My take...the shoe was suspended in time, similar to Jupe's entire life after the attack. He never excelled in his career because he lived in the past trying reignite the "glory days" of his fame. The shoe foreshadowed Jupe's future and demise.

[Birdboy]

Jupe's sitcom history was foreshadowing. He should have learned a valuable lesson back then, but once the Star Lasso Experience scene started to unfold on screen, we were all just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Edit: this interpretation came from other youtube comments i saw, and it makes the whole story click together in my mind better. I do wish some stuff was more spelled out in the script, so that rewatches or scouring the internet wouldn't be necessary.

[nikosfilipino]

the 1 in a million chances that the shoe fell vertically and just how unsettling the imagery is really adds to the overall theme of cosmic horror IMO. That one simple shot of the shoe standing upright caused me so much dread and made me so uncomfortable in the theater i had to look away funny enough. Peele took a big risk IMO making a cosmic horror film as any depiction of the creature would have taken away the illusion of the existentialism that is the entity but little details like that shoe really add to that feeling of dread that cosmic horror aims to make one feel.


ps: if i sound like an idiot im typing this out at like 2am on a work night after watching a late viewing of the film so my bad lol

[davidcentocomedy]

"Waiting for the other shoe to drop" - To await a seemingly inevitable event, especially one that is not desirable.